


Build a Memorial of Our Hearts and Hands

by ryyves



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-09
Updated: 2015-11-09
Packaged: 2018-04-30 18:16:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5174213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryyves/pseuds/ryyves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nico and Will lay awake outside Cabin Thirteen and contemplate their ghosts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Build a Memorial of Our Hearts and Hands

Will spent his nights in the strawberry fields. He sat with his knees tucked up in the dark memorial of vines Pollux had raised after Castor’s death, shivering from cold or from unshed tears.

Nico never went near the strawberry fields, and Will never asked him. The Demeter kids didn’t like how every time Nico approached, the plants began to shrivel and wilt, and Pollux, who had grown vines strangling his cabin, kept a protective eye.

Besides, the memorial was a small, twisted enclosure of knotted strawberry vines, and Nico still had nightmares about the airless walls of the jar, about the endless claustrophobic caverns of Tartarus.

Cabin Thirteen had shifting stars on its ceilings, a vivid re-imagining of the night sky. The blank black ceiling had triggered panic attacks, where he’d been sure he was going to die, flashbacks to his death trance, hopeless and fading away within the confines of the jar. 

Even with the stars on the ceiling, some nights Nico couldn’t sleep indoors at all. Those nights he would curl up outside his cabin doors. And some nights, Will couldn’t take the gentle breathing of his siblings or the melancholy solitude of the strawberry fields, and he would take his sleeping roll outside and stretch out beside Hestia’s hearth between the cabins.

Will saw Nico trudge out of his cabin. He caught Nico’s eye and beckoned to the ground nearby, but he didn’t push. He turned his eyes back to the heavens, letting a smile travel across his lips as Nico sat down beside him. Coldness radiated from Nico’s body, and Will shifted away.

“You think I’m death,” Nico said, and he couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice.

“I think you’re going to die.” The grass tickled Will’s calves. “One day I’m going to wake up and you’ll be nothing but a shadow, and I’ll burn your empty shroud.”

Nico sighed, and the sound rippled out from him, grasses bending away. “I wanted to die,” he said eventually, “for a long time. My sister, Bianca—my other sister—she was everything to me. I thought–thought I could bring her back.”

Beside him, Will tensed. “Must be nice,” he said, and there were a thousand years of guilt scraping in his voice.

“No,” said Nico, and he tore his gaze from the quiet stars to hold Will’s eyes. “You don’t mess with the dead. The only thing ghosts can teach us is how to find closure.”

Will crossed his arms over his chest. “How to keep living,” he murmured, echoing Nico’s sentiments, and a slight smile crept across Nico’s face.

They were silent for a long time, lying side by side beneath the stars.


End file.
